Musical theatre / Only Everything, at The Courtyard Studio until October 26. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Autobiographical musicals based on the life experiences of their creators are something of a rarity.

Jason Robert Brown did something similar with his musical The Last Five Years.

But what makes Only Everything particularly interesting is that in this case those creators are local couple Shell Abdoo and Berin Denham who not only wrote the book, music and lyrics for the show, but also perform it along with Louiza Blomfield and David Pearson.

Only Everything depicts the travails of singer/songwriter Tori played by Abdoo and divorcee Aaron, performed by Denham, and their attempts to navigate the complexities of dating apps, shared custody arrangements and the well-meaning, if occasionally disastrous, encouragement of Aaron’s exuberant best friend Simon (David Pearson) and Tori’s older sister Emma, warmly portrayed by Louiza Blomfield, in their attempts to embrace a future together.

The musical features a succession of attractive, tuneful pop-rock songs, the lyrics of which advance the storyline and are skilfully integrated through the dialogue by the clever orchestrations of Nicholas Griffin, who leads the excellent on-stage band on keyboards with Dylan Slater on guitar, Christopher Pound on bass and Ben Schumann on percussion.

In an effort to indicate the many changes of locale inherent in script, first-time director, Rachel Thornton has fallen into the trap of cluttering her otherwise sensibly stripped back production with an overload of unnecessary furniture and props distractingly manipulated by the cast. Elsewhere her direction is thoughtful and appropriate, making good use of excellent lighting and sound skills of Jacob Aquilina and James McPherson.

In this first iteration Only Everything offers much to enjoy as an evening of entertaining and pleasingly performed musical theatre.

However, it also feels like a work in progress and hopefully further development will concentrate on editing and sharpening the script and eliminating the interval to reduce the running time to 90 minutes, thereby allowing the show to reach its full potential as a clever comment on the mores of modern living.